29 January 2007 - PANA. Some parents and guardians in Nigeria's predominantly-Muslim northern state of Zamfara have prevented the immunisation of their children against the crippling polio disease and Hepatitis B, claiming religious and cultural considerations, the local press reported Monday.
The refusal was a setback to the immunisation exercise which ended Sunday in the state, the first to introduce the punitive version of the Islamic Sharia law in Nigeria in 2000.
 
The protesting parents and guardians outrightly rejected the administration of Hepatitis B, saying the injection could cripple their children.
The mostly affected areas were cited as Dutse-Ngari, where Quoranic teachers refused to allow the immunisation of their students, and Gidan Dari, where residents refused to have their children immunised.
 
The report said some angry parents even chased and stoned vaccinators who had visited their homes to immunise their children.
Despite the action of some parents and guardians, the National Programme on Immunisation (NPI) Officer in the state, Yusuf Musa, noted that non-compliance rate was indeed lower than what obtained during previous rounds.
 
"It is true that there were some cases of non-compliance and rejection of vaccines especially Hepatitis B, (but) the level of non- compliance this year is an improvement upon the one we had last year," he said.
"A total number of 138,971 children have received OPV (Oral Polio Vaccine) while only 11,737 children received Hepatitis B in the first two days of the exercise," Musa said.
He said the NPI would involve traditional rulers and religious leaders in mobilising those who had rejected immunisation of their children and to equally help to explain how immunisation could boost children immune system.

"We recognise that those who are rejecting these vaccines are doing so on the basis of either religion or culture. That is why we are now increasing traditional rulers as well as religious leader in our advocacy strategies," the officer added.
The low success rate of the immunisation exercise in Nigeria, especially the largely-Muslim north, has been blamed for the delay in the eradication of polio around the world.
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